Morning Movie Updates: The Hobbit, New Moon, Hack/Slash, Star Trek

The Hobbit is looking to cast some dwarves and has a big name in mind. Hack/Slash inches closer to a movie adaptation. The Twilight Saga: New Moon has already started breaking records. And Star Wars and Star Trek finally meet and shake hands.

The Hobbit

AICN Down Under reports that Brian Cox is one of The Hobbit production’s leading choices to play one of the thirteen dwarves (Thorin, perhaps?). You may recall that Cox has flirted with epic fantasy before — he was initially hired to voice Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia movies but was replaced by Liam Neeson when it was deemed that Neeson would be a better tonal fit.

Speaking of The Hobbit, the production’s co-owner, MGM, is not exactly in the best place right now. Specifically, it doesn’t have any money left and is in a ton of debt. After reporting in early October that they entered into a forbearance agreement with their lenders (meaning they don’t have to pay off any debts) until December 15th, they’ve recently extended that to January 31st and announced that they’re exploring “various strategic alternatives” including possibly selling the company. And its rights to The Hobbit and the entire James Bond franchise. I’m not sure if this would affect production of The Hobbit, but I’ll keep you posted…

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

…has broken the record for the biggest advance online ticket seller, according to Fandango’s stats. Second through fifth-biggest are, respectively, Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Dark Knight, and the original Twilight.

In other words, learn to live with The Twilight Saga for now, because there’s no avoiding it. After New Moon, Eclipse comes out in July (they’re able to go so fast because they get different directors for each film), and then there’s still Breaking Dawn…which Summit might split up into two movies.

Hack/Slash

The ongoing comic book series Hack/Slash, your basic fun badass-hot-chick series about a “slasher” hunter named Cassie Hack, is moving forward on the film adaptation front. Bloody-Disgusting reports that Relativity Media, which owns the movie rights, has hired screenwriter Stephen Susco.

Susco wrote both Grudge movies and is also writing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D for Twisted Pictures. Does he have Hack/Slash in him? We’ll know when we find out if Relativity hires another writer a few months from now.

Star Trek

Finally, Star Trek hits DVD tomorrow, so you’ll be able to check this out for yourself: R2-D2’s cameo has been revealed. Industrial Light & Magic likes to insert the Star Wars droid into every movie they do, and here he is:

Hm. It’s like millions of Trekkies suddenly cried out in terror…and were suddenly silenced.

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